THE RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME GUIDEGUIDE

[TO FACEBOOK REMARKETING]

02RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME GUIDE TO FACEBOOK REMARKETING

Have you ever had a beautiful pair of boots or a guitar pedal you were looking at seem to “follow” you around the internet? Maybe you decided you shouldn’t spend the money, but you keep seeing ads for it and finally you’re too tempted not to buy it.

“It’s so weird,” you think. “I saw them on Facebook three times in the last two weeks, so I ordered them. I figured it must’ve been fate.” Well, it was not fate, it was remarketing. We’ve all fallen victim to the power of remarketing.

INTRODUCTION

When a user visits your website, they are “cookied” or tagged. Remarketing works by following these tagged visitors (AKA leads or prospects) around the web, whether that be on a social media site or on various websites across the internet, with reminders of the products they previously checked out or related offers. So when you see ads for the new dining set you just browsed on Pottery Barn appearing on the sidebars or top banners of other sites, this isn’t a coincidence or “fate,” it’s remarketing. And it works for both e-commerce and lead generation businesses.

WHAT IS REMARKETING

When a user visits your website, they are “cookied” or tagged. Remarketing works by following these tagged visitors

(AKA leads or prospects) around the web.

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Remarketing comes in many shapes and sizes. For instance, Google AdWords allows advertisers to remarket through their platform by creating remarketing lists with a set of rules. You can target all website visitors or you can target visitors who came to a specific page on your website or completed a specific action. Then Google will trigger your ads to show to the same visitors on websites across the Google Display Network.

Facebook remarketing works in a similar fashion to AdWords remarketing, but rather than showing your ads across websites within the Display Network, your remarketing ads are shown on Facebook. Facebook also more commonly refers to remarketing as “Custom Audiences.” The concept is the same: Someone visits your site or interacts with your brand,they’re tagged with a code you implement to track them, and then while they’re scrolling through their Facebook feed your ad pops up to remind them what they’re missing.

WHAT IS FACEBOOK REMARKETING?

Someone visits your site or interacts with your brand, they’re tagged with a code you implement to track them, and then while they’re scrolling through their Facebook feed your ad pops up to remind them what they’re missing.

But there are actually a few different flavors of Facebook remarketing, including customer lists, website traffic, and app activity.

Customer List

Perhaps one the most powerful tools Facebook has to offer is the ability to serve personalized ads to a list of contacts you’ve already acquired. With customer lists, Facebook ads become more like email marketing by targeting specific people with personalized messages. Whether it be email addresses, phone numbers, or even Facebook user IDs, you can pull a list of contacts from your CRM or wherever your customer data is stored, upload it directly to Facebook, and target people with ads that are relevant to where they are within your sales funnel.

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Website Traffic

This is the flavor of remarketing that you’re likely most familiar with, which will serve ads to people who have visited your site within a set time frame. Once you’ve placed a Facebook pixel on all pages of your site, you can set up specific audiences with filters based on pages they’ve visited. For instance, if you sell running gear, but you want your Facebook ads to target people searching for sneakers, then you can set up an audience that shows ads to just people who have visited pages with the keyword “sneakers” in the URL.

App Activity

Finally you can target based on app activity. If you have an established app this is typically a good option, and there are multiple ways to show relevant ads to the right people based on user behavior. For instance when someone abandons a shopping cart within your app you could target them with the same product and special discount code. You can reach people who have recently opened your app, recently completed a purchase (to upsell), or achieved a certain level in a game.

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Why wouldn’t you?

“Remarketing is life,” said WordStream founder Larry Kim when I asked him his thoughts on it. “Your lowest hanging fruit can be converted by using Facebook’s custom audiences and site visitor remarketing tactics. It’s ridiculously awesome and you’d be stupid to ignore it.”

Still not convinced? With Facebook’s active monthly user base larger than China’s population, and 22 billion ad clicks per year, the opportunities to gain more business through Facebook ads are endless, and what better way to start than with familiar faces?

WHY SHOULD I REMARKET ON FACEBOOK?

If someone has already visited your site, downloaded youre-book, or engaged with your app, the chances of them interactingwith your ad and purchasing from your brand are much higher than

if they saw your brand for the first time on Facebook.

Just think about it like the dating pool. You’d be more comfortable going on a second date withsomeone you’ve already had a pleasant evening with, rather than a blind date — it is much more intimidating and the chances of your date flaking are higher. The same goes for advertising. If someone has already visited your site, downloaded your e-book, or engaged with your app, the chances of them interacting with your ad and purchasing from your brand are much higher than if they saw your brand for the first time on Facebook. In fact, Facebook remarketing ads get 3X the engagement of regular Facebook ads!

Regardless, you should be advertising on Facebook, which makes remarketing onFacebook a no-brainer.

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To get started with remarketing log into your Facebook AdsManager account, select the “Tools” dropdown and select“Audiences.”

Then select “Create Audience” and “Custom Audience.”

On the next screen you can chose which type of remarketing list you want to create from the three we explained above: Customer List, Website Traffic, or App Activity.

HOW DO I GET STARTED?

Customer List

To import a customer list you can do so by either copying and pasting your customer list or uploading a file that contains emails, phone numbers, and/or Facebook user IDs (or mobile advertiser IDs). Facebook also has an integration with MailChimp if you chose to upload your list through the email server.

http://www.wordstream.com/ppc-free-trial-ssa?cid=Web_Any_Ebook_Social_FullPageAd_SearchTrial&utm_source=FullPageAd&utm_medium=Ebook&utm_campaign=searchtrial

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Website Traffic

Before targeting website traffic you need to create and install your Facebook pixel on all pages on your website. (NOTE: if you installed a custom audience pixel in the past you can bypass this step.) This is a one-time step since each ad account is only allowed (and only needs) one pixel to remarket to visitors. To do so…

Go back to the “Tools” dropdown at the top of the pageSelect “Pixels”Select “Create a Pixel”Name and create your pixel

If you’re not in charge of placing code on your site reach out to your webmaster or developer and have them place the pixel between the <head> tags on every page of your website. The pixel won’t start remarketing until you’ve create an audience tied to an ad campaign.

Now return to the “Create a Custom Audience” screen and select “Website Traffic.” On this page you can decide the parameters the site visitor must meet in order to get remarketed to. For instance, anyone who visited your site or just people who visited pages that contain the word “shoes” in the URL. Name your audience (for instance: “Shoe Shoppers,” “All Visitors,” “Visited Lead Gen Pages”), and create it!

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Once you have your custom audiences set up you’ll need to either apply them to ad sets you’ve already created or create new ad sets that you tie to your customer audience(s). If you’re unfamiliar with the campaign, ad set, and ad creation process, refer to this guide.

5 FACEBOOK REMARKETING BEST PRACTICES

You should never buy followers unless it’s through remarketing! Why? Because you want to reach your “super-fans” to get the highest engagement rates possible, which will lead to higher relevance scores,

cheaper clicks, and more organic visibility.

Now that you understand the value of Facebook remarketing and how to set it up, it’s important to ensure you’re doing it better than your competition. Follow these five best practices to run conversion-worthy Facebook remarketing campaigns.

#1: Buy Followers with Remarketing Lists

Are you looking to grow your page likes? Whether it be metrics you’re trying to hit to please your boss or providing legitimacy behind your brand on social, it’s always great to have high follower numbers, but growing these organically can be challenging. Luckily, Facebook allows you to run paid campaigns with the main goal of getting page promoters (see image below).

However, Larry advises that you should never buy followers unless it’s through remarketing! Why? Because you want to reach your “super-fans” to get the highest engagement rates possible, which will lead to higher relevance scores, cheaper clicks, and more organic visibility.

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If you are an AdWords advertiser then you’re likely aware of how Quality Score affects your ad rank and the price you pay per click. Facebook has a similar metric called relevance score, which dictates how much you pay and how often your ads are shown to your target audience. The main influencer of relevance score is engagement rates, which are likely to be much higher if you’re showing your ads to Facebook brand loyalists.

You want your Facebook fans to be brand ambassadors whoare likely to engage with your content so that every post has a

high relevance score, leading to cheaper clicks and more visibility.

You wouldn’t want a bunch of grumpy people who hate turkey to attend your Thanksgiving feast, right? The same goes for Facebook page likes. You want your Facebook fans to be brand ambassadors who are likely to engage with your content so that every post has a high relevance score, leading to cheaper clicks and more visibility. The best way to do this is to promote your page to people who are already familiar with your brand via remarketing!

Then there’s the added bonus of organic visibility. If one of your Facebook fans also “likes”your page posts, then that post is likely to show up to the user’s Facebook network of friends, leading to the potential to gain free likes and followers from this organic visibility.

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#2: Remarket to People Who Have Already Liked Your Page

Now that you have the followers, you need to ensure they see and interact with your posts. Take tip #1 a step further by remarketing your boosted posts to your Facebook followers. This is a full-proof method because these people have not only already interacted with your brand, but they’ve interacted with your brand on the same platform you’re remarketing with, Facebook.

If a user has taken the action of liking your page, then it’s clear they’ve embraced some level of brand loyalty, and the chances of them engaging with your posts are much higher. This again leads to higher relevance scores and organic reach.

#3: Layer Your Custom Audiences with Facebook’s Targeting Options

The level of granularity you can achieve with Facebook targeting options is absolutely mindblowing. From targeting different variations of mom personas to the Prime Minister of Spain, if you know your audience well, you’ll have no trouble finding them. While it’s important not to get too granular and limit your reach, it’s even more important not to stretch your budget across an oversized arena of Facebookers, since this will actually limit your visibility and lead to lower relevance scores (and less profitability).

While it’s important not to get too granular and limit your reach, it’s even more important not to stretch your budget across an oversized arena of Facebookers, since this will actually limit your visibility and lead to lower

relevance scores (and less profitability).

Let’s say your remarketing audience is bordering on the larger side. Perhaps you’ve uploaded a list of 1,000+ contacts, but you only have $150 to spend. Rather than sprinkling a dollar here and there, you’ll be more effective if you combine this list with demographic targeting to hone in on the most in-market, ready-to-buy audience.

It’s all about finding the right balance between budget and audience size, but experimenting with layering targeting options on top of your custom audiences will likely increase your relevancy and allocate your budget to an audience that is more likely to convert.

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#4: Think Strategically About Your Goal When Setting Time Frames & Creating Ad Schedules

Advertisers need to be cautious about fatiguing their remarketing audiences, but at the same time if buying cycles are longer or special offers are limited they need to be more aggressive.

The life of a Facebook ad is typically short-lived, but rather then running your ad continuously until the budget runs out, think about the goal of your ad. Are you running a Black Friday, limited-time discount? Then run the ad aggressively for the time of the sale, without frequency caps, to a remarketing list that looked at the relevant landing pages, but didn’t convert. If you’re trying to simply promote your page to site visitors, this might be an on-going ad set, where you change the copy and imagery from time to time to keep your ads fresh.

Similar to AdWords, you can also set up ad schedules to run your ads on specific days of theweek and hours of the day rather then 24/7 all week long. If you’re a SaaS company and notice higher traffic and conversion volume Monday through Friday from 9 to 5, then create an ad schedule accordingly.

If you’re a SaaS company and notice higher traffic andconversion volume Monday through Friday from 9 to 5,

then create an ad schedule accordingly.

Moral of the story, when setting up your ad sets be strategic when it comes to timing and scheduling to get the best results possible.

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#5: Find New Customers by Layering Lookalike Audiences onto Custom Audiences

Lookalike audiences allow you to clone a relevant audience to expand your reach to an entirely new set of leads. This is an incredibly powerful way to expand your reach and find an untapped audience.

What better way to do this than by cloning your remarketing list? These people have already converted by downloading an e-book or subscribing to your blog. You know this list is “in-market,” and perhaps you’ve already converted them and need to find new opportunities. By layering lookalike audiences on top of your custom audience, Facebook will find leads that are similar in makeup and likely to be interested in your products or offerings.

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ABOUT WORDSTREAM

WordStream, Inc. provides software and services that help marketers get the maximum results from their online marketing efforts. WordStream’s easy-to-use software allows for more effective paid search and social campaigns with the 20-Minute Work Week, a customized workflow that guides marketers through steps that can greatly improve their AdWords, Bing, Yahoo, and Facebook campaigns, plus tools for call tracking, keyword optimization, and more. WordStream also offers an award-winning free PPC tool, the AdWords Performance Grader, which evaluates users’ Google AdWords accounts and provides valuable tips for improvement. WordStream is a Google Premier Partner.